As posted on November 4, 2012 by Sam Blustin on Soup for the Neshama
Tzedek, tzedek, tirdof. Justice, justice we shall pursue.
As a part of my internship with Healthy Youth Healthy Communities through the Minneapolis Jewish Family and Children’s Services, I help lead programs for youth on topics ranging from drugs and alcohol, to healthy relationships, to self esteem, and many more topics. Today, we led a program at Temple Israel as part of their yearly program teaching students about bullying.
I was leading the rotation where we discussed the Jewish values that deal with bullying and general respect for others, and one of them stuck out in particular: Tzedek, tzedek tirdof.
Tuesday is election day (in case you aren’t aware). While the election is monumental because of the tight Presidential race, there are two issues on the ballot that I’m most interested in. And they just happen to be the two proposed amendments to the Minnesota state constitution. While both amendments can be argued against using the following arguments, I only going to focus on one here: the marriage amendment.
I was perusing Facebook one day and I came across a letter from a young child to President Obama that a friend of mine posted. It reads:
I was struck by the letter because of just how true it is. Across the country, children of same sex partners are bullied in school, for no other reason than that they have parents of the same gender. Kids like little Sophia go home after a long day of school and cry themselves to sleep, confused about the world in which they live and wondering why they should be made fun of for having parents that love them very much, and care deeply about them.
These couples do care deeply about their children, and they care just as much about each other. While this amendment aims to ban gay marriage constitutionally, it doesn’t change the facts about these families. Same sex couples will still exist. They will still have families. And they’ll still love each other just as much.
What this amendment does is that it makes it legal to discriminate against others. It tells kids and adults that it’s okay to bully others. That it’s okay to make fun of their families. And not only that, but it makes it legal to do so. It validates the bullies’ claims that Sophia’s parents are “gross” and “weird”. But bullying is never acceptable, whether it’s in school or “legalized” in the constitution. At least that’s what we’ve been teaching our children.
There are a number of other Jewish values that I could use to support basic human rights for all people. There’s love your neighbor as yourself, where we extend the love we give to ourselves and our families to our friends, and even strangers. We are made B’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God, where we each are made in God’s image, made the way God made us to be, with our chemical wiring having been given to us by God. I could go on and on with more values that I discussed and instilled in the teens I taught this afternoon. But they all hinge on the concept that we should be entitled to the basic human rights and equality that all humans should have. Justice, justice, we shall pursue, in this generation and in future generations.
You don’t have to believe in same sex marriage. You don’t even have to like it. But we do need to respect people who are different from us, and love those people just the same. We set a precedent with our actions, and it’s a precedent that our children will follow for the rest of their lives. Let’s teach them that bullying and discrimination are not okay. Let children like little Sophia feel like they live in a country where they are supported and truly feel free and protected. Let us pursue justice and freedom for all.
VOTE NO FOR THE MARRIAGE AMENDMENT ON NOV. 6TH.
[Note: the intention of this blog is in no way a political statement in favor or against a Presidential candidate]
